Florida Politics

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Kudos to Mayor Kriseman and the Team

There is not enough paint in Pinellas County to color
the spectacle of Rick Kriseman and his dream team anointing Antony Holloway St.
Petersburg's new Police Chief a pretty picture.

After all those campaign and inaugural promises of
transparency and listening to the people, a national search, interviews, Council briefings and a public show, Kriseman and his inner circle decide on
their own who the new police chief will be.

Kriseman is right, it is the Mayor's prerogative to appoint
the Chief, but why promise one thing and do the opposite?

Notwithstanding
the likely influence of former Chief Davis, Kriseman and his high paid inner
circle screwed this up to a degree few can remember in St. Pete.

E-mailing the
outside candidates, and calling in the local candidate 3 days before the
proposed announcement to tell them they were not getting the job was serious
lapse in judgment to say the least. They had to know there would be a leak and
the media would go crazy.

And a side note
to the Mayor, all of those police cars that drive by City Hall each day, they
don't just look for homeless people.

In addition, it
would appear that the Kriseman team has not learned in 6 months how porous the
St. Pete City Government fabric really is. It is akin to sieve.

In the Baker
administration, the staff would frequently find out what we were doing AT the
press conference. It didn't take Baker long to learn there were few secrets or
confidences kept at City Hall or anywhere else in the administration for that
matter.

The political
consultants, former and current candidates I have talked to are all shaking
their heads.

Kevin King Chief of Staff

It is hard to
tell who was the architect of the weekend disaster.

Kevin King, Kriseman's
Chief of Staff, who views himself as political "operative", and Ben
Kirby, Kriseman's long time communications expert and adviser, are likely at
the center of the storm.

King and Kirby
have been parked at City Hall in high paying jobs most likely until the Mayors'
next campaign. Neither has been particularly affective and this weekend is a
glowing example.

Ben Kirby Communications Director

Several phone
calls and texts to Kirby as things began to unravel on Saturday were responded
to by a simple text, "No comment over the weekend."

The objective all
along has been to keep Assistant Chief Melanie Bevan out of the Chief's office;
because Bevan in the Chief's seat spells the end of the Coalition.

It's not that
Bevan is too close to the union that is dumbest excuse on the planet, it's
because Bevan is one of the very few people that scares the hell out of Goliath
Davis.

If Kriseman was
going to follow the Goliath Davis plan as outlined in the Challenger piece, he
should have followed it completely, including the "go outside for another
search" recommendation. Why worry about time now. It's already been 8
months.

Now the whole
police chief thing is Kriseman's and his alone.

The folks on the
Pier Task Force should go into high alert because this is exactly what happened
the last time. A lot of public effort was garnered then ignored by the
administration.

In the Pier issue
keep your eye on large campaign contributions.

Kriseman has
burned a lot of political capital in just a few days.

The
administration looks inexperienced, disorganized and confused. And in fact they
are.

Kriseman may finally
be learning that old friends, political hacks and former campaign workers
really don't know much about running a City.

Antony Holloway
may be a great guy and an outstanding police chief, but my guess is he is here
for all the wrong reasons and he has no idea of how alone he is going to be at
1300 1st Avenue North.

E-mail
Doc at: dr.webb@verizon.net. Or
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Disclosures: Contributor to No Tax for Tracks